Michael Moynihan: A Christmas miracle for Cork but lots more to get done
The Waving Crowds Santa The Corkmas Parade At Ever Kane First Patrick Cork Darragh St Down Picture: To Going In
Last January, yours truly, ever-anxious to be helpful, made a characteristically constructive series of suggestions here.
If you don’t recall, I outlined a few issues which needed attention, pointing out that progress on same would improve life for all of us. I even added a reasonable proviso, stressing that if these issues were tackled one by one, and month by month, then progress would be all the more achievable.
How have we done so far?
For January’s project I picked out the “crumbling quay by the South Gate Bridge ... an obvious place to start, not least because it’s been going on for so long (this problem goes back to the middle of 2022).” Credit where it’s due. This was fully repaired as of May, with Cork City Council saying it had “engaged proactively” with the owners of the stretch of wall involved, and the result is a vast improvement.
Sadly, if you stand on the South Quay and look downriver you’ll see another issue which has popped up since. In May a car crashed into the wall on the southern side of Parliament Bridge and it has not yet been repaired properly.
That’s six months with a gaping hole in a quay wall: surely we can move a little faster than that?
There are ongoing works nearby which will be depressingly familiar to anyone who drives along that route — or, to be more accurate, to anyone plunged into the horror of the traffic jams in the area. Maybe we should have just put the crew which worked on the wall at the South Gate Bridge into a few canoes and floated them down to the next bridge.
For February’s project I nominated the Marina Market, with an appeal “to put this market on a more secure footing”, given the regular thunder rumbling about its legal status.
March I reserved for Cork’s bus station and the news is not so good. Back then I mentioned a worrying tendency in America to relocate bus stations far from the centre of cities, with all of the inconvenience that that entails for passengers.
The bus station in Cork has far more pressing problems, however. The chaotic service emanating from the main station has been cut back in an effort to improve it — George Orwell would have approved — while the building itself is no better than it was twelve months ago.
In September there was a demonstration at the bus station: members of the public protested about the quality of the bus service, but the station itself is also in urgent need of attention and improvement. Only last week the Cork Commuter Coalition pointed out that it is “a drab site that has become a haven of unsafety, with a dank interior and basic public amenities, such as toilets and seats, that are cordoned off from public use”.
April was for Bishop Lucey Park, or “the only real green space in the heart of the city (which) is shut down for redevelopment ... to be finished in 2025, over a year after it was closed for works.” The work seems to be continuing here all the while, and the branded boarding makes progress a matter of guesswork (unless you pass by upstairs on a bus).
One concern is the worryingly flexible finishing date, however. Last December, early 2025 was the date mentioned for completion of the project, but city councillors were told recently that the project is “on schedule for reopening to the public in late 2025”.
Hmm.
The month of May I earmarked for the Event Centre.
Apologies if I jinxed everything, but that may be a grandiose claim to make, even for me.
The latest development — deep breath — as reported here by Eoin English last month? “Cork City Council says it is already engaging with 'key stakeholders' on how to advance the new procurement process for the proposed 6,000 capacity venue, for which the first sod was turned in 2016, but which must now be retendered following a Cabinet decision on Tuesday.”
What can we say that hasn’t been said already? (‘Works have started’ — everyone) On the basis that you’re probably looking forward to Christmas we’ll leave this here altogether. Apart from pointing out — again — that moving the whole thing from South Main Street to the Kennedy Quay-Centre Park Road-Marina area, as was envisaged years ago, seems the only viable option.
A mixed bag so far, then, but the last entry in my to-do list, at least, should give readers a smile.
Last January, I pointed out that there had not been a ceremony to switch on the Christmas lights in Cork since 2019. In November 2023 Cork City Council officials said that was due to “reasons of public safety and challenges related to crowd management". They also pointed out that “it is notable that Galway City, Limerick City, and Dublin City have not announced plans to have a public ‘switch-on’ event.”
At the time I suggested this was bad news for any public event in Cork, as “challenges related to crowd management” sounded as though they would rule out any gathering of more than two people, for instance. How could we stage games and concerts at all at all?
Yet this year we had a large-scale event in Cork city: a Christmas miracle!
Rebecca Daly reported in these pages on a city council-organised parade a couple of weeks ago which featured the “Cork Barrack Street Band leading the Corkmas Parade through the city centre streets ... joined by performers, musicians and dancers from arts organisations including Montfort College of Performing Arts, Joan Denise Moriarty School of Dance, and the Cork Butter Exchange Band . . .”
I did not make it to the parade myself but I am assured by first-hand witnesses that challenges related to crowd management were overcome despite everything, and that public safety was not compromised. Images from the event certainly depict ordinary folk enjoying a parade rather than a re-enactment of the Fall of Saigon, say.
In the last twelve months or so we have transformed ourselves from a violent mob likely to cause havoc at — checks notes, then double-checks notes — a Christmas lights ceremony, to a crowd of regular citizens just taking an interest in a public parade.
That’s the only answer to the sudden outbreak of civilisation among Cork people’s public behaviour, but kudos while we’re here — to the people who organised a proper Christmas event rather than hiding behind the inertia in other cities.